The hydrogen vehicle movement appears
stalled. The push to use the diatomic gas as auto fuel never
exactly made it off the ground due to a lack of infrastructure --
production, distribution, and storage facilities. However, for
a time automakers like Toyota and Honda were pushing ahead with
testing of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

A new
study might put another road block in front of the prospect of a
near term commercial hydrogen vehicle release, while giving the
plug-in vehicle movement a nice boost. The study was authored
by Ryan McCarthy at the University of California, Davis and published
in the Journal of Power Sources. The ground-breaking study,
entitled "Determining marginal electricity for near-term plug-in
and fuel cell vehicle demands in California: Impacts on vehicle
greenhouse gas emissions", examines the emissions impact of
hydrogen and plug-in vehicles versus their gas
counterparts.

Lowering carbon emissions to fight warming,
along with high fuel prices and global-political instability, has
been a key driving factor for the adoption of hybrids and alternative
fuels. The new study, though, judged hydrogen vehicles to be an
utter failure at that objective, in their current state. The
study concluded, "All of the pathways except for [fuel cell
vehicles] using hydrogen from electrolysis reduce [greenhouse gas]
emissions compared to ICEs and [hybrid electric vehicles]."

It
doesn't dissuade further research into hydrogen vehicles; it simply
indicates they are unlikely to be ready for showtime anytime soon.
It points out that steam methane reforming is a promising emerging
method of hydrogen production that may one day allow hydrogen driven
vehicles to actually live up to their emissions promises.

In
the near term, the study finds that plug-in electric vehicles are the
best option in terms of lowering carbon emissions. Despite
using electricity mostly generated by "relatively inefficient
steam- and combustion-turbine plants" the well-to-wheel carbon
impact of EVs is still significantly lower than hybrids.

While
by no means the definitive study on the topic, the new work does much
to fill in the gap in knowledge about what exactly the true impact of
green vehicles are. While the topic of on-the-road emissions
has been well researched, there's been much less progress in
examining the full lifetime impact of vehicles. Now, that
lifecycle has been examined in depth and EV advocates can put another
feather in their caps, while hydrogen advocates are once again handed
another setback.

The study may play a crucial role in forming
the policy of California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, an effort to
reduce the carbon impact of transportation. And given that
President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has embraced
California's emissions policy, the new study could have a
profound impact on the course of regulations and the auto market
nationally, as well.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Maybe in your country. Some countries like Canada are shifting away from using coal to create electricity. For instance, Ontario is banning the use of coal by 2014 and the sale of Incandescent Bulbs by 2012.

quote: Good. More coal for those of us that don't believe that the "science is settled".

The science that coal produces a crapload of air pollution is ABSOLUTELY settled!

I'm not too horribly worried about greenhouse gas emissions but I absolutely think we should phase out coal power plants due to the horrendous quantities of air pollution they produce. (Aside: as I mentioned in another post, us in Ontario will NOT really phase out coal by 2014, let alone by 2007 as was originally promised).

What's most distressing is the sorry state of North America's coal plants. MOST (60-75% of them) don't even have scrubbers! This is 1970's era technology that STILL hasn't been implemented to this day on most of our plants. There's absolutely no excuse for that and we collectively pay BILLIONS in health care costs (either via taxes or raised health insurance premiums) because of it.

Exactly how much is tough to say, but by many estimates we pay as much in health care costs to deal with the pollution from coal power as we do for the power itself. For example, check out the following link:

They estimate the total cost of coal pollution at $64B per year, or 3.2 cents/kWh. That has NOTHING to do with global warming, climate change, etc. etc. This is just straight-up pollution that kills an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people per year in the U.S.

quote: For instance, Ontario is banning the use of coal by 2014 and the sale of Incandescent Bulbs by 2012.

Keep in mind that our government also promised to phase out coal power by 2007... and then 2009. Now that date has been pushed back to 2014 but they've still only closed one of the 5 coal power plants in this province.

Note that they aren't "banning" the use of coal, just a politicians promise to shut down coal power plants. And this particular politician doesn't have a very good record of keeping his promises even relative to other politicians!

I can guarantee you right now that Ontario will NOT shut down the remaining 4 coal plants by 2014. They *MIGHT* be able to shut down 3 of the 4, but nobody has a plan for how to replace Nanticoke (the largest coal plant in North America). It's not just the amount of power it produces, Nanticoke also plays a vital role in stabilizing generating capacity and our electrical transmission facilities in this province. Building new natural gas generating stations in Milton and Oakville won't fix this.

As for banning incandescent bulbs, this will go through even though it makes no sense. There are many situations where the environmental impact of an incandescent bulb is LOWER than a compact florescent bulb, even if in general the latter is better.

In any case in 2011 Ontario will, in all probability, have a new government.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer